“I did not feel I was really prepared at all” to pass the bar, Goldstein said of his three years in law school. “Even the best of test preps can’t really help you unless you’ve had that solid foundation in law school.”

Goldstein attended Arizona Summit Law School in Phoenix, one of 19 U.S. law schools where at least a quarter of graduates who took the bar exam didn’t pass within two years, according to a USA TODAY Network analysis of American Bar Association data. The schools include large state universities, for-profits, and independent colleges enrolling, in all, about 8,250 students, or 7 percent of U.S. law school students.

Experts say the numbers represent a significant failure to meet the expectations of law school students, who after spending three years in school graduate with debt averaging more than $115,000.

“If you are offering people a program that is designed to lead to admission to the bar, then there should be a reasonable expectation of achieving the goal,” said Deborah Jones Merritt, a law professor at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

Goldstein’s experience highlights the difficulties law-school graduates face when they struggle to pass the bar. The exam is offered twice a year and it takes a few months to get results. Failing even once can significantly delay a graduate’s entry into the profession.

In the meantime, many take lower-paying jobs, as Goldstein did working as a law clerk. What he earned didn’t put a dent in his $285,000 in student-loan debt, most of which was accrued in law school. The cost to Goldstein of repeatedly taking the exam, including travel and preparation, has so far totaled $18,000.

Investigation finds some law schools are failing graduates

A USA TODAY Network investigation finds a quarter of the graduates from some U.S. law schools don’t pass the bar within two years.

USA TODAY

On Monday, a policy-making body for the ABA will weigh a controversial proposal that would toughen the bar pass standard for law schools. The proposal is expected to be vigorously debated and comes after criticism that the accrediting body has allowed schools to admit too many lower-achieving students who struggle to pass the bar.

Here’s what could change: Law schools currently have five years to show 75 percent of their graduates who take the bar exam have passed. The proposal would narrow that to just two years.

Supporters of the change say the five-year time frame has allowed schools with dismal bar-passage rates to continue operating. But critics worry struggling schools will respond by requiring higher scores on the law school entrance exam. This will hurt diversity in law schools and the legal profession, they say, because minority and economically disadvantaged students historically have scored lower on the Law School Admissions Test.

Kyle McEntee, executive director of Law School Transparency, a non-profit group that tracks data related to law schools, said the ABA’s current bar-passage requirement, known in legal circles as Standard 316, is full of loopholes and doesn’t hold schools accountable. No school has ever been found out of compliance by the ABA, including when several schools posted bar-pass rates below 50 percent in consecutive years.

Western Michigan University Cooley Law School was among the lower-performing schools, with a 70-percent passage rateduring that period.

The private,Lansing-based school is one of the least selective law schools in the country. About 86 percent of applicants between October 2017 and 2018 were accepted.

Jeffrey Martlew, Cooley’s interim president, said the school gives students who might be rejected by other law schools the opportunity to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become successful lawyers.

Cooley became the largest law school in the country during the boom for legal education between 2000 and 2010, enrolling nearly 4,000 students at its peak. Amid a decline in law school enrollment since 2010, Cooley became more lenient. In its most recently admitted class, the bottom 25 percent of students had an average LSAT score of 139, down from 143 a few years earlier.

Martlew acknowledged that a score of 139 is too low for admission. In short order, he said he plans to improve the academic profile of its students and boost graduates’ bar passage rates. Under his plan, students who enroll through the standard admission process would need an LSAT score of at least 145.

But Martlew, a former judge,opposes the ABA’s proposed bar-pass standard. He calls it a “radical departure” that, if adopted at all, should be phased in so schools can adjust.

But more importantly, he said, the standard would force law schools to turn away lower-profile students, among them many minority students, a move that would likely make the nation’s law schools less diverse.

“We don’t want to slam the door on our access mission,” he said, “which is really what makes us different than any other law school.”

No ‘one-size-fits-all rule’

Others share Martlew’s concern about the proposed requirement’s impact on law school diversity.

Danielle Holley-Walker, dean of the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C., calls the proposal a “one-size-fits-all rule” that would punish schools whose mission is to educate students from marginalized communities.

A historically black school that opened four years after the Civil War, Howard had a 73 percent passage rate on the bar exam after two years. That’s just slightly below the proposed 75-percent requirement.

Kimberly Delk Eason, attorney general for the National Black Law Student Association, said instead of penalizing schools with lower scores, the ABA should require them to provide more student services, such as bar-preparation courses for third-year students.

Some schools already do this, but the ABA doesn’t require it.

ABA officials have said there is no evidence that law schools would use a bar pass standard as a basis for decreasing diversity; the ABA already requires schools to commit to diversity, the organization said.

McEntee of Law School Transparency doesn’t put much weight on the argument that the change would shut down law schools that enroll large numbers of minorities. If a school has low bar exam pass rates, it’s already doing more harm that good, he said.

“People who don’t get through school and don’t pass the bar exam are not diversifying our profession,” he said.

‘Absolutely grueling’

Some schools have used more-selective admissions to raise bar scores.

At University of South Dakota School of Law, the state’s only law school, bar pass rates began falling in 2014. By 2017 just 46 percent of first-time takers were passing.

The drop coincided with a decision to admit students with lower LSAT scores and grade-point averages, as the school tried to maintain enrollment amid declining applications. The LSAT is considered the best predictor before law school of whether a student will pass the bar exam.

Many of the nation’s least-selective law schools used a similar strategy to fill their classes after 2010, as law firms downsized during the Great Recession and law school enrollment plummeted.

The number of law schools admitting at least 25 percent of students considered “at risk” of failing the bar jumped from 30 schools to 74 schools from 2010 to 2014, according to a 2015 report by Law School Transparency.

South Dakota lawmakers, alarmed by the sudden decline in graduates’ bar scores, demanded more oversight. The Legislature found more funding, which the school used to reduce the size of theincoming class by 40 percent and to be more selective in admissions. The school began offering a bar-prep class.

In July, 82 percent of first-time test takers passed the state bar exam.

Members of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity in a June 2016 meeting had pointed questions about rising student-loan debt and law schools enrolling more students at risk for not passing the bar.

Panel members also criticized the ABA for not withdraw the accreditation of any school during the past five years.

“This feels like an agency that is out of step with a crisis in its profession, out of step with the changes in higher ed and out of step with the plight of the students that are going through the law schools,” said Paul LeBlanc, a committee member and president of Southern New Hampshire University, according to a transcript of the hearing.

The U.S. Department of Education didn’t follow the panel’s recommendation and allowed the ABA to continue to accredit law schools.

Several of the 19 law schools with pass rates below 75 percent for their 2015 graduates declined comment to the USA TODAY Network, or did not return messages seeking comment: Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco; Puerto Rico’s Inter American University; New England Law in Boston; Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law; District of Columbia John A. Clarke School of Law; Syracuse University College of Law in New York; American University Washington College of Law, also in Washington, D.C; University of Wyoming College of Lawin Laramie; Indiana’s Valparaiso University Law School; Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School; and California’s Whittier Law School.

Some public law schools saw a quarter of their 2015 graduates not pass the bar exam within two years, according to the ABA analysis. These included law schools at University of Wyoming, University of South Dakota, University of North Dakota and University of the District of Columbia.

But most are private law schools, including two in Puerto Rico, Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico School of Law, and Inter American University in Puerto Rico School of Law.

Pontifical’s interim dean, Fernando Moreno-Orama, said the proposed change to bar-passage requirements concerns him because law schools don’t control the content of the bar exam or set the passing score. The Puerto Rico bar exam covers more than a dozen areas of law, he said, a mixture of U.S. and Spanish law, “so the amount of material you need to know is enormous.”

The school has made changes and pass rates have improved, he said, “but it’s not enough. We have to do better.”

Two other law schools on the low-performing list are operated by the same for-profit company.

Florida Coastal School of Law had a 72 percent pass rate over two years. The Jacksonville-based school is owned by the same for-profit company, InfiLaw, that operates Arizona Summit Law School in Phoenix, which also has struggled with bar pass rates.

Florida Coastal’s Dean of Academics Jennifer Reiber takes issue with the ABA’s proposed requirements. She said they fail to take into account what she called “non-persisters”— people who give up after failing the exam once.

Some graduates may not want to practice law, she said, and plan to use a law degree to further their careers in journalism or public policy. But they “reflexively take the bar once,” she said, to see if they can pass.

Florida Coastal’s sister school, Arizona Summit,had the lowest bar exam pass rate in the country for its 2015 graduates, according to the ABA analysis. Only 60 percent passed within two years, compared to 88 percent nationwide.

The ABA put the school on probation in 2017 for reasons separate from the bar-exam standard. (The school’s low bar-pass rates still didn’t fail the ABA standard because of the five-year time frame.)

School officials made changes to admissions, curriculum and students services. Despite their efforts, enrollment dwindled.

The ABA moved to revoke the school’s accreditation in June. Before that could happen, school officials announced they were no longer accepting new students and planned to close after the spring 2020 semester.

Jessie Myrehn is among the Arizona Summit graduates who didn’t pass the bar exam within two years of graduation.

The 54-year-old has been working as a law clerk and teaching online college classes in the interim.

She attributes narrowly failing the exam in 2017 to getting a migraine on the second day of testing. It has taken time to work out details with a doctor. But she plans to retake the exam in February, this time with accommodations that will give her more time.

“It’s just time to do this,” she said.

‘Something is wrong’

ABA officials say a tougher standard will better protect students.

Law schools will be more conscious of who they admit and whether those students have the talent and drive to enter the profession, said Barry Currier, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education.

Getting 75 percent of students to pass the bar exam within two years may be a problem for a few schools, Currier said. But the ABA Council is saying “it’s a problem you have to overcome,” he said.

Jones Merritt, the law professor at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, calls the proposal a “reasonable standard” for ABA accreditation.

“We really have to be careful, given the high price of legal education, that schools don’t end up creating false hopes in students and end up admitting too many who aren’t passing the bar,” she said.

Most schools will easily meet the tougher standard, said Merritt, who wrote a position paper when a similar proposal was debated by the ABA a few years ago. Schools that fail will have to develop programs to help students pass.

Some schools may end up closing, she said, but that’s OK.

“The point of accreditation is to make sure there’s a certain level of quality,” she said.

The ABA Council began pushing its proposal to revise the bar-exam standard in 2016.

If adopted, schools that fail would have two years to turn around or risk having their ABA accreditation revoked.

The loss of accreditation would essentially be a death knell for a school because most states require students graduate from an ABA-accredited law school in order to sit for the bar exam.

After an unsuccessful attempt to revise the standard in 2017, the proposal is back this year.

On Monday, the ABA Council will ask the House of Delegates to weigh in again during the ABA’s Midyear meeting in Las Vegas. The proposed change is expected to be met with fierce opposition once again. If the delegates don’t concur, the proposal goes back to the council, which still has the final decision.

3 schools already shuttering

A handful of schools that would be at risk if the proposed standard goes into effect, have already announced plans to close.

Arizona Summit Law School in Phoenix, Whittier Law School in southern California and Valparaiso Law School in northern Indiana are not accepting new students and will shut once students finish their degrees.

Goldstein, the Arizona Summit graduate who has failed the bar exam eight times, supports a tougher bar pass standard for schools. He believes the change would make schools “actually focus on helping their students pass the bar.”

Despite his struggles, he has no plans to give up on his dreams of becoming an attorney.

The last time he took the bar exam in July 2018 he missed by 13 points, the closest he has come. He is going to take the bar exam in February — for the ninth time.

“I’m going to give it another shot,” he said, “and hopefully be done with it.”

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